A Disappointing Outcome

We join with groups and individuals in expressing our disappointment with the Ethiopian court’s guilty verdict in the trail of Hailu Shawel et al. I am not sure what the continued outpouring of disappointment and anger will do to help the prisoners, but it sends a clear message that nobody is happy. Nor does the outcome of this trial help to foster political reconciliation and speed up the democratization process in the country. As much as we appreciate and support the efforts of EPRDF leaders to advance Ethiopia’s development, their refusal to listen to peoples’ voices and set the prisoners free is disappointing. 

I just looked at a long quotation in my MA thesis from Mesfin Wolde Mariam’s 1991 book, entitled Suffering Under God’s Environment: A Vertical Study of the Predicament of Peasants in North-Central Ethiopia.  At my age, I would need to have more than video and audio clips from the 2005 electoral campaign to even begin to suspect that this intellectual might have participated in a plot to overthrow the Ethiopian government.

Justice is a normative concept, so that what is right here can be wrong somewhere else. Perception – that part of our personality which influences how we see things – is also important in how we accept the significance of normative values. All this is to say that the whole trial has simply been perceived as EPRDF vs Hailu Shawul et al and that it has little to do with the interest of the Ethiopian state. A smart man like Prime Minister Meles Zenawi should know that the outcome of this trial brings about no benefits to Ethiopian society. 

Getachew Mequanent

Ottawa, Canada

June 13, 2007